Trigger points for relief

In the last couple of posts I have been talking quite a bit about neck and shoulder pain as this is something I get a lot in the clinic and I feel the more everyone understand the process of how it comes about hopefully you will learn how you can undo the process.

One way many therapists will treat not only neck and shoulder pain but also pain in other areas of the body is by using trigger points. These points will often appear in muscle areas adjacent to or sometimes quite a distance from the actual region of pain. For shoulder pain for example these points may appear in the forearm upper arm chest or further down the back. this will vary depending on the pain or injury region.

If the therapist does acupuncture these points can be needled but if you are wanting to give yourself a little self help and find a point that you find is very sensitive or even painful to the touch but is away from the site of injury try applying sustained pressure to the point. The pain can be reasonably intense to begin with but should diminish with continued application of pressure to the point.
In many cases assuming you have found the right spot the pain at that spot will diminish and you will feel relief quite quickly at the injury site.

Remember sustained pressure produces the best results with trigger points

As you can see in the diagram to the right the shaded area shows the area of pain, not only in the upper arm but also in the lower arm below the elbow.
In this case the trigger point is shown to be the triangle on the lower part of the shoulder blade.

So next time you have shoulder or neck pain or something like tennis or golfers elbow, repetitive strain injury, or even headache give it a try it usually works well.

You can read more about improving your body balance here